


Reset

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Deathly Hallows AU, Dramione Winter Fic Exchange, F/M, Half-Blood Prince AU, Mild Sexual Content, Morally Ambiguous Character, Non-Linear Narrative, Past/Present Tense, Time Turner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-10 11:52:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5584411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <br/>
  <i>And the fear—the fear that he’s learned to swallow, choke on, bury the crushed and fragmented shards of—it's turning the space between him and her and the last six weeks, the last six <b>months</b>, into a gaping yawning brutally invincible <b>chasm</b>; a wall to scale and a cliff to jump and a step he’s never quite been brave enough to take.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She takes it for him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Of course she does.</i>
  <br/>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reset

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nadiaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadiaa/gifts).



* * *

_[ day 20 ]_

 

Charcoal dust.

He breathes it in, tars his tonsils and feathers his lungs, tastes the bitter and the sweet and the intangible; and he has dirt under his nails and Potter’s broken wand tucked into his back pocket and he doesn’t know who he just Stunned but there are a dozen faded sketchbook pages fluttering around the messy cobwebbed corners of the room and a crackled bronze theater mask swaying ominously from a hook on the wall and—Granger’s time turner has never before felt so impossibly, appallingly heavy in his hand.

He rolls up his left sleeve.

Bare skin, pale skin, _blank_ skin.

He had to be sure.

 

* * *

 

_[ before ]_

 

 _“You expect me to just—just_ betray _the Dark Lord? Out in the bloody open like that? Are you insane?” he asked, slamming the flat of his palm against the wall next to her head._

 _She didn’t flinch—just lifted her chin and squarely met his eyes and viciously poked the center of his chest to push him away._ _“I expect you to understand that you and your parents will never be_ safe _so long as the_ Dark Lord _is alive and relatively well,” she retorted. “I expect you to—”_

 _He cut her off by digging the point of his wand into the soft part of her lower abdomen._ _“I could kill you,” he snapped, tone ragged and jagged and hoarse. He’d been avoiding mirrors for weeks, for months, but he could guess what his face looked like just then—haunted, hunted, frantic. Unreliable. Weak. “I could_ kill _you, Granger—and what makes you think that I won’t?”_

 _She inspected him with a furrowed brow and a twitching frown, like he was nothing more than a problem to solve, a code to crack, a curse to_ break _._ _“You won’t kill me,” she stated simply. Easily._ Coolly _. “You won’t kill me, and you won’t kill Dumbledore. We both know that.”_

 _He stared at her. Swallowed. Lowered his wand._ _“I can’t—it can’t be during the attack,” he finally said, almost unable to recognize the terrible awful_ drained _timbre of his own voice. “They’ll be Death Eaters swarming me before I could even think of escaping. It has to be—before.”_

 

* * *

 

 

_[ day 33 ]_

 

He’s in a cramped, dusty root cellar with a glaringly suspicious Lee Jordan and two sleeping Weasley twins when Granger’s next Patronus finds him.

Draco half-smiles at the silvery-grey otter, ignoring Jordan’s obnoxious, loudly muttered joke about _literally being in bed with the enemy_ —because he knows they don’t trust him, knows they _refuse_ to trust him, and Draco doesn’t quite think that they’re _wrong_. He barely trusts himself. The entire concept of loyalty has become murky and foreign—it’s what signed the death certificate Granger had forged and forwarded to his parents, after all.

“What are you doing for them, anyway?” Jordan demands, fidgeting with the bulbous platinum end of a nearby radio antenna. “No one seems to know.”

Granger’s Patronus chirps out a random series of seemingly nonsensical numbers and letters; Draco copies them onto the back of one of the new Ministry propaganda posters and then squints, searching for a pattern.

“That would make it a _secret_ , then, wouldn’t it?” he sneers, cocking his head to the side and tentatively circling every third vowel from the right. “A secret you’re clearly not important enough to be _told_.”

Jordan scoffs. “Yeah, and what’s _not_ a secret is that you’re not really on our side, are you?”

“What does that even mean?”

Jordan reaches out and flips over the poster Draco’s writing on, causing his pencil to drag against the bottom of a wooden crate. He glances down—the words ‘DANGEROUS’ and ‘MUDBLOODS’ are printed in a deep, goldenrod yellow, ink spotty and bleached like it’s spent too much time in direct sunlight.

“You probably don’t see anything wrong with that,” Jordan remarks, tersely. “ _That’s_ what I mean.”

Draco purses his lips, an itchy, irritable sort of uncertainty scuttling across the nape of his neck. It’s like a spider. He wants to crush it. “I’m not on your side, no,” he says, careful to keep his hands steady as he resolutely flips the poster back around. “I’m on my own.”

 

* * *

 

_[ before ]_

 

_“Do you have one? A—Dark Mark?”_

_Draco paused with the paper-thin page of a potions book clutched between his thumb and forefinger. An uncomfortably unfamiliar sensation—embarrassment, cloying and thick—was making his chest tighten and his shoulders wilt. He wasn’t going to explain to her that the Dark Lord had not_ deigned _to give him a Mark; that Draco had wanted one, badly, would have accepted it and treasured it and taken pride in it—but he hadn’t even received an offer._

_Instead, he wordlessly undid the buttons on the cuff of his shirt. Her expression rippled with her own brand of embarrassment as she examined the empty space on his forearm. And anger licked at the base of his spine, hot and sharp and swift, and before he could stop himself, he was opening his mouth and drawling—_

_“A Mark was going to be my_ reward _for completing this mission, actually.”_

_That time, she flinched._

 

* * *

 

_[ day 100 ]_

 

He shows up to the Final Battle with scabs on his knuckles and Potter’s invisibility cloak hanging out of his front pocket.

It’s cleansing, somehow—the fog in the air and the magic in the ground, needlepoint winter branches crunching beneath his boots as he looks at the castle, at the gates, at the drawbridge and the clouds and the near-invisible battle lines, drawn in blood and forged in lies and nothing, _nothing_ , has ever quite felt so monumental.

So _impossible_.

“You coming with us?” Jordan asks, dreadlocks tied back with a thick leather cord and dark eyes narrow. Curious. “Or…”

And Draco wonders, and Draco wonders, and Draco _wonders_ —

When it all changed. Why it all changed.

 

* * *

 

_[ before ]_

 

 _“It’s too dangerous, I told you, Vol—the Dark Lord is a_ Legilimens _, for god’s sake—”_

 _“It will destroy my mother to think that I’ve been—murdered,” he maintained, knowing he was being mulish and petulant and whiny, really, but unable to reign himself in. His desperation had taken on a wholly new dimension since he’d made his deal with Granger. The hollows under his cheeks were like quicksand—sinking, sunken, bottomless. “I can’t do that to her. It—that defeats the purpose of what I’m doing to_ save _her—”_

 _“Oh, please,” Granger hissed, fumbling to yank a deceptively slim book out of the depths of her bag. She clutched it tightly and waved the title at him:_ Advanced Memory Charms _. He wrinkled his nose, and she continued, voice strident, low, heated and halting as it echoed around the dusty dungeon classroom. “You have_ no idea _what I’m—what I’m willing to_ sacrifice _to keep_ my _family safe. At least you’ll get yours_ back _when everything’s…everything’s done. At least—”_

 _Draco didn’t like how she sounded—accusatory, confrontational, eager to blame and primed for a fight._ _“God,” he sneered, clenching his jaw, “it’s almost like they’d be able to_ protect themselves _if they weren’t_ muggles _, isn’t it?”_

_Instantly, her face went slack with astonishment and icy with fury—and her cheeks were red and her lips were parted and there was a lightning-fast spark of vulnerability, like she couldn’t help it or stop it and he—abruptly, he shut his mouth._

_Crossed his arms._

_And nausea swirled, coated his nerves and sloshed stomach acid around like basilisk venom in his gut, and he thought about apologizing—about saying sorry—except he wasn’t certain that he’d mean it._

_“Just—make sure you can do_ all _of the Unforgivables before we get started,” she finally said, too stiffly to be properly_ strong _, but too threatening to be anything else. “Just in case.”_

 

* * *

 

_[ day 41 ]_

 

The coordinates she’d sent had led him to a small bed and breakfast on the Dover coast; it’s quaint, unobtrusive, mostly vacant—a grizzled old man checks him into the only room with an ocean view, and Draco hesitates for far too many seconds as he fits an antique brass key into the slightly rusty lock. He counts them all, just like Granger taught him to.

The door swings open.

He braces himself for whatever new mess he’s here to clean up—to fix—and draws his wand, a prickling sensation igniting the pads of his fingers. It’s shadowy and quiet inside, blue velvet curtains covering the lone bay window—he stiffens when he notices Granger’s ubiquitous beaded handbag lying at the foot of the bed.

A loud gasp sounds from his left, where the bathroom must be, and he immediately spins around, a particularly Dark disarming spell on the panic-dry tip of his tongue—

He freezes.

Granger’s standing a few feet away in nothing but a flimsy white towel, her hair wet and her eyes wide and her skin illuminated by the warm yellow light streaming in from behind her.

“You—why would _you_ be—did I send you here?” she manages to stammer, toes curling into the carpet; he can see the shape of her thighs, the length of her legs, the rounded slopes of her breasts pushed up over the knot of the towel. “Why would I have…”

He fumbles for the note in his pocket, feeling clumsy and feverish and strangely off-balance. “I’m—a minute late, I suppose, but…yes, you sent me here.”

She doesn’t move.

He doesn’t _leave_.

Because his veins are still oscillating with that ebb and flow of pulsing, pounding adrenaline and his grip is still too wildly furiously _tight_ around the handle of his wand and the fear—the fear that he’s learned to swallow, choke on, bury the crushed and fragmented shards of—the fear is buzzing, singing, _alive_ , turning the space between him and her and the last six weeks, the last six _months_ , into a gaping yawning brutally invincible _chasm_ ; a wall to scale and a cliff to jump and a step he’s never quite been brave enough to take.

She takes it for him.

Of course she does.

And her towel falls and his heartbeat skips, stalls, speeds up with a dangerous rush of blood—of _something_ —and there’s water beading across her collarbones and dripping down and down and _down_ and he feels like he’s _observing_ the next several moments, like he’s watching some other version of himself close off that remaining distance and place tentative hands on the naked curve of her waist and lower his head, brush their lips together, catch her shuddering breath and his answering sigh and it’s—

It’s a kiss he doesn’t think he would’ve understood how to want, before.

 

* * *

 

_[ before ]_

 

_She found him doing Arithmancy homework in the library; a vague vestige of normalcy, all things considered._

_But his quill continued to scratch across a yellowing sheaf of parchment as she peered down at his earlier calculations, her lips quirking into a small, pleased grin when she read over the various runes he’d used._

_“Malfoy.”_

_He glared at the spot on the page where she was running—_ brushing _—her fingers, back and forth, circles and spirals, a clear, meandering rhythm established that he didn’t care to deduce the meaning behind. It was difficult to look away. He wondered how he’d never noticed how graceful she was when she wasn’t buried under an overstuffed book bag and a chunky wool-knit cardigan._

_“What?” he eventually barked, smearing a drop of glistening, onyx-black ink._

_She waited a while before answering. And then—_

_“How much do you know about ciphers?”_

 

* * *

 

_[ day 25 ]_

 

He has three extra wands in his hand when he gets to the outskirts of Godric’s Hollow.

“Jordan’s is more… _pliable_ , I think, and mine—well, mine won’t like Potter, _obviously,_ so you should—”

“Thanks,” she interrupts, listless and cool. “Lee’s will be fine.”

Her tone brings Draco up short. “Alright, then,” he says, slowly.

She scuffs her shoe along the bottom edge of a nearby log, flags of grass-green moss and brittle wings of bark fluttering to the ground. There’s a wariness to her demeanor—a _caginess_ —that he hasn’t seen in at least a month. Worry’s etched itself into her pores. She looks like a single gust of wind could knock her over. Shatter her composure. The sky blue flannel of her shirt is too overwhelmingly _bright_ in the burnt-orange shade of dusk.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks, gaze darting every which way but _his_. “Helping us. Helping _me_.”

He hunches his shoulders as he shrugs. “You know why.”

“Do I?”

“ _Yes_. It was _your_ plan.”

She smiles, but it’s off. Ill-fitting. “It was, wasn’t it? You’re right, of course. I know why you’re doing this. And I know why _I’m_ doing this. I just—are our reasons really so different?”

He thinks, uneasily, that she’s asked a rhetorical question; that he isn’t going to _like_ what her answer is. “What d’you—”

She speaks over him. Loudly. Uncharacteristically. “For example, I’m doing this— _I’m_ doing this because we were never going to have even a _chance_ of winning if I didn’t,” she says, posture rigid and facial muscles trembling and scratchy bone-raw notes of exhaustion finally seeping through. “ _I’m_ doing this because no one else was ever going to, and—well. You’re the last person anyone would expect to be helping us, aren’t you?”

He shoves his hands under his armpits. He studies her like he would a textbook—a finite number of pages, an appendix to sift through if he gets lost. Easy to close. To memorize. He already knows he’s wrong. “Yeah. I am.”

She swallows, and she nods jerkily, and she blinks. He can barely keep up. “See, that’s—that’s what I’ve _counted_ on. Because _Dumbledore_ , he had a spy, a good one, and Dumbledore _died_. No one else was—everyone’s just been looking to _Harry_ to solve their problems, to save the world, and it’s like they’ve never picked up a bloody history book because—because _single individuals don’t win wars_. This war, in particular, is _complicated_ enough that I knew—I knew we needed an _edge_. And Remus and, and _Shacklebolt_ and _Moody_ —they want to fight, they want to win _that way_ , and that may be how it all has to eventually end but that isn’t _practical_ right now, not while we still have so much to _do_ —and you— _you_ —you don’t believe in what we’re doing, do you, but you’d _kill yourself_ before you let your family be hurt and that’s—that’s _good enough_ , don’t you understand? You were so sick of being _scared_ , weren’t you?”

He was scared, yes.

He _is_ scared.

And it’s sudden, blinding—

This conversation, it isn’t about him.

 

* * *

 

_[ before ]_

 

_The cabinets were done._

_Mended._

_He had two hours until he had to meet Granger, and the vial of Polyjuice was like a lump of toxic, cancerous lead in his jacket pocket._

_He couldn’t decide what was worse._

_Pretending to die._

_Pretending to be alive._

 

* * *

 

_[ day 92 ]_

 

Her Patronus is misty, oddly _faint_ , when it appears to whisper—

 _Shell Cottage_.

And Lee Jordan’s brow is puckered in a thoughtful frown and the less annoying Weasley twin is pausing with a chicken salad sandwich halfway to his mouth, kicking at his brother’s ankle, and Draco feels a bit like his legs have stopped working as he stands up, adjusts the cuffs of his shirt, disregards the thrumming, terrifying surge of apprehension soaking through his skin like _sweat_ , like fear, like he’s back in that Hogwarts bathroom with a weeping ghost and a crippled conscience and a _dreadful_ , debilitating awareness of his own frailty—

There’s a resounding _crack_ as he Apparates onto a beach.

And Hermione’s there, skin pale and wan and _milky_ and she has a bandage in her fist and long-dried tear-tracks on her cheeks and her bottom lip is split and her jaw is bruised and her arm—

Her _left_ arm.

There’s a scar, violent and fever-hot and _angry_ , and he sees it, reads it, and his stomach clenches around _nothing_ and his insides contract and constrict and he’s going to be fucking _sick_ , he thinks, eyes pinned to the sluggishly stoppered blood and the flaking red-violet scabs and the _word_ —and he doesn’t know what he’s _there_ for, doesn’t know what he’s come to stop or fix or prevent from happening but he needs to _hurt someone_ , needs to erase the resignation from her face and the ugly _ugly_ marks from her skin and—

“You can’t fix this,” she murmurs, more gently than he’d like. “We learned something important.”

“Then—then _tell me_ , now, whatever it is, and I can—”

“Your parents are alive,” she goes on, not bothering to acknowledge what he’s saying. “I tried—I _managed_ —to let your mother know. That you’re not dead.”

Bile rises in his throat, hits his tongue, and he wants to retch. “You saw my parents,” he repeats, dully. “You—were they the ones—”

“No. _No_. It was Bellatrix.”

His aunt, then. Shame crystallizes in his chest. “And she—you—learned something. Something important.”

She looks down. “Yes.”

His entire body twitches towards her, and he wipes a hand across his mouth. “So just—just _tell me_ , and we…” he trails off, realization dawning, big and bold and _painful_ —because she’s doing this for _him_. She’s letting his mother have this, this _thing_ , this thing that she couldn’t give her own parents or herself and she’s giving it to _him_. He tries to speak again, not really sure why. “You don’t have to—I can _fix this_ , I can—”

“Why do you _want_ to?” she snaps. “Do you just—do you not like the _reminder_ of what I am? Front and center?”

He rears back.

And he has enough reservations—enough _misgivings_ —lurking in his hindbrain, building up and up and _up_ , like skyscrapers, like _towers_ , and there’s rage, too, _familiar_ rage, rage that he’d put himself here and rage that she’d dared to _ask him_ that and—

He doggedly runs his fingers through his hair.

His gaze drops.

And the scar on her arm catches the last dying rays of sunlight, crooked and raw—and it glistens, and it _glows_ , and the word— _mudblood,_ he’d called her once, twice, _more_ than that—the word tears and gnaws and _punches_ and he doesn’t know at all what kind of person he’s become.

He leaves.

He _runs_.

 

* * *

 

_[ before ]_

 

_It was gleaming gold and fairy-dust fragile; an hourglass on a spinning top, inscribed with spangled bronze runes and a series of decorative shooting stars._

_“We’re going to make mistakes,” Granger said, twisting the chain around her palm and_ squeezing _. “We’re going to need help. And this—”_

_“Is a time turner, yeah, and they’re illegal last I checked.”_

_She laughed, slightly hysterically, and then met his eyes. She looked…frightened. Like she wasn’t certain she had anything left to lose. He hated that he understood why._

_“No, Malfoy, this is—this is_ insurance _.”_

 

* * *

 

_[ day 70 ]_

 

The Snatchers have been getting closer.

Better at tracking.

Draco drapes the petal-pink cashmere scarf that Hermione had left for him over a thinly veiled tree branch, far enough off the ground that it might attract attention—and there’s no guarantee that they’ll see it, of course, but there’s a chance. It’s enough.

Before he can spin the dial on the time turner and Apparate back to the abandoned hunting lodge he’s staked out at with Jordan and the Weasleys, an ominous rustling sounds from the juniper bush directly to his left.

“That you?” he calls out, warily. “Penelope?”

A snort of laughter precedes the staccato blur of brown hair and slender limbs that emerges—and she’s brushing off the backs of her jeans and chewing on the inside of her mouth and approaching him with sly, somewhat _anxious_ movements, her footsteps light but her expression resolutely shuttered. Fragile. Uncertain.

“I only—I only have a few minutes—fifteen, maybe—and you’ll obviously need to, need to do the requisite arithmetic before you can go back, just to be safe, but—”

He just grins, shakes his head, yanks her into a kiss.

 _She_ melts.

And he bruises.

There’s a hastily conjured blanket on the forest floor, his back pressed against crackling leaves and spindly twigs and rough, saw-toothed rocks that he hardly even notices because he’s biting down on her neck and sucking a mark onto the curve of her clavicle and she’s guiding his hand up the front of her jumper and her hips are rolling, grinding, helplessly and sinuously—

She stops.

Pulls back.

Inhales, exhales, heavy and sweet—

Her lips are swollen red and her eyes are a sparkling brandy-brown where they aren’t eclipsed by pupils blow wide like stars, like _galaxies_ , and he’s hard enough that he briefly worries for the buttons on the fly of his trousers—but she’s _looking_ at him, peculiarly and fondly, a smile forming and a giggle bubbling and he doesn’t know why, not exactly, but a faint flush heats the base of his throat and spreads down, up, _out_ , and he flips them over and kneads her hips as he straddles her knees and he kisses her, _kisses_ her, brushes his lips against the sensitive spot behind her ear and smirks when her spine arches and her breathing changes and—

Her discarded wand emits a trio of shrill, high-pitched beeps.

“You set—a timer?” he gasps, disbelievingly.

She slants a bemused sort of glance at him. “Everything has an expiration date, Draco.”

 

* * *

 

_[ before ]_

 

_The lake was glassy and flat, a midnight blue crystal fractured by the moonlight into fourths, eighths, sixteenths—he’d gotten more paranoid since Potter had ripped his chest bloody and tried to kill him in the middle of the girls’ washroom._

_“He didn’t mean to do that,” Granger kept insisting, the feeble, pleading tone of her voice overshadowed by her ever-present disdain for Draco’s—well, Draco’s everything. “He thinks you’re still on_ their _side—”_

_“And I’m not?” Draco interrupted, snidely. “Really? How do you figure?”_

_She opened her mouth. Closed it. Visibly floundered for a response._ _“You’re going to be helping us. Actively working against them. You’re—”_

_“Taking my chances on your way out, with direct and obvious long-term benefits for_ my _family,” he snarled. “Don’t mistake that for—”_

_“Oh, that’s absurd!” she burst out, a scowl marring the otherwise smooth lines of her face. “There’s a good side, and there’s a bad side, and if you’re not on one then you must be on the other—”_

_“Seriously?” he whisper-shouted, dragging a furious, shaking hand through the front of his hair and positively seething at her implication. “I’m not quite sure how you’ve missed it, Granger, but I don’t care—at all, not a single sodding bit—about what you lot are fighting for. I’m not a mud—I’m not a muggle-born. I’m not an imbecile, either. If my father hadn’t—hadn’t messed everything up—I wouldn’t need to be—”_

_“But he_ did _, and you_ are _, and whether you want to admit it or not—” Abruptly, she broke off. Clenched her fists. Flashed her eyes at him—quickly, just once—before turning to glower at the lake. “If_ you _were the one he wanted to hunt down and—and enslave, and eradicate, maybe you’d get it.”_

 _Draco scoffed, the near-ludicrous mismatch of this entire conversation settling like thick, sour sludge in the pit of his stomach._ _“You don’t have to be a_ muggle-born _to be one of his victims, Granger. That’s the point you seem to be missing.”_

_She went still._

 

* * *

 

_[ day 125 ]_

 

A silver-grey otter slips in through the crack in his bedroom window.

He’s finally back at the Manor again, finally living something that abstractly resembles his old life in most of the ways that matter—and he hasn’t heard from Hermione in almost a month. He doesn’t know what to say, how to say it, _if_ he wants to say it; he suspects that he misses her, but the thought doesn’t _grate_ like he’d once been afraid it might.

No.

It just… _aches_.

Now, though, his windpipe closes in on itself as he listens to her Patronus rattle off a seemingly nonsensical list of numbers and letters. A gravely, desperately _relieved_ gurgle of laughter catches in the bottom of his throat—and his hand trembles as he copies down the coded message on a spare sheet of parchment.

It takes him twice as long as it once had to decode it, and he’s already Apparated into the neatly terraced backyard of a muggle townhouse before he thinks to change out of his pajamas.

The moon is bright.

His palms are slick with sweat, clammy and much too soft, and it occurs to him that Granger— _Hermione_ —might have brought him here to say goodbye. Tie up loose ends. Tell him ‘ _thanks, but no thanks’_ and recite half an encyclopedia’s worth of war-time psychology as a likely excuse for their respective behavior.

A door at the side of the house suddenly opens.

And she looks—

 _Ethereal_ , maybe, but also like she’d been fretting for _ages_ while she fought with herself about whether or not to contact him. She’s beautiful. He realizes, belatedly, that he’s probably in love with her—but he doubts that he’s ready to say that out loud. He doubts that she’s ready to _hear_ it. Not from him.

Her chin quivers for a moment as she stares. “I wasn’t sure…I didn’t know if you’d still come.”

He rocks back on his heels. “Why wouldn’t I?”

She hesitates, just barely, and then takes another step forward. “Well…”

“Yeah?”

Another step. “Everything’s over now, isn’t it?” And another.

He pauses. Licks his lips. There’s hardly any space left between them, and she’s warm. She’s so very warm.

“No,” he says, a light, airy smile swimming straight to the surface. “Not _everything_.”

 

* * *

 

_[ before ]_

 

_She approached him in the library, of course._

_“Malfoy,” she said, voice wavering and expression pinched—her fingertips were white, bloodless, twisted around the hem of her skirt; like she needed the assurance she was clutching something real. “We should talk.”_

_He raised his eyebrows._ _“No,” he replied, slowly, coldly, “we really shouldn’t.”_

_Her nostrils flared, and he pushed past her with a measured scoff and a carefully calculated brush of their shoulders—he didn’t expect her to grab his elbow, to hold him still, to glance furtively around the otherwise empty stacks and then tug him close, closer, until her mouth was up against his jaw and her breath was swirling around the shell of his ear and she was whispering, intently and intensely—_

_“I know what you’re doing. I know what you’re doing with the cabinets, on the seventh floor—and if you_ listen _to me—if you listen to me, I can help you.”_

 

* * *

 


End file.
